The Alchemist, But Make It Fatima
She had a name. She had a Personal Legend. She just wasn’t the hero.
Every story has a shadow.
And in some of the most beloved tales, that shadow is a woman whose story was never fully told. This is a reclamation of one such woman—a voice from the margins of a modern myth.
If The Alchemist were a movie, it wouldn’t pass the Bechdel Test. Not by a long shot.
It’s a simple test to measure female representation in movies using the following three criteria:
It has at least two named female characters.
These characters talk to each other.
Their conversation is about something other than a man or men.
And sure, it’s not surprising The Alchemist doesn’t pass the test. Paulo Coelho’s beloved book is, at its core, a spiritual fable about a young man’s journey to fulfill his “Personal Legend”—a story of omens, intuition, and universal truth. But for all its mystical wisdom and poetic rhythm, one thing about the book has always rubbed me the wrong way:
Fatima.
She’s the only named female character in the book and she appears briefly, offers a few sweet lines about waiting for her man, and then disappears back into the dunes—more symbol than person, more idea than character.
Santiago meets her at a well, immediately falls in love (as boys on spiritual quests tend to do), and then… he leaves. She tells him she will wait for him, because true love allows the beloved to pursue their legend.
And just like that, she is checked off the map like a scenic stop on the road to enlightenment.
They remember me as the girl by the well.
The one who waited.
The one who smiled gently and said, go.
The one whose name was stitched into the side of the story,
not the center of it.But stories like his are often written by those
who don’t know how to read women like me.They called him the seeker.
They called him brave.And me?
They called me patient.
Let them.
I’ve read The Alchemist more than once. The first time, I read it with wonder. The second time, I read it with questions. The third time, I read it with a bit of chagrin. Not because I didn’t love the story, but because it loved her so little.
Fatima, as Coelho wrote her, is what many of us were taught to be as women: supportive, patient, uncomplicated. The, “Behind every great man is a great woman holding him down.” A woman who says, “Go do your great work. I’ll be here when you return.”
But every time I revisit her role in the book, I feel the same ache in my gut—the ache that comes from watching yet another woman be relegated to a symbol of someone else’s awakening. I am of the belief that men who see romantic relationships as a reward at the end of their journey inevitably see women as accessories instead of assets. And Fatima, in this context, becomes the accessory. She exists to affirm the boy’s journey, not to live her own.
There’s no mention of her having a Personal Legend. No backstory. No future. No ambition or calling of her own. She is the beloved. The checkpoint. The desert rose who exists, simply, to be admired.
But that can’t be her whole story… not on my watch. ;)
There is a part of the journey no one talks about.
The part before you tell your story.
Before you have a “legend” to speak of.
The part where everything inside you feels like it might burst from the pressure of becoming.I had already passed through that fire.
The desert had scorched every illusion off me until only the real remained. My heart had been split, tested, rearranged. I had let go of what I loved, more than once. I had learned how to stay rooted in the presence of windstorms, and how to disappear into them when needed.
By the time the boy came to the well,
I was no longer looking for signs.
I was one.
We’ve all been told some version of this. A man goes on a quest. A woman becomes the place he returns to. She’s the lighthouse, the balm, the hearth. She is love, incarnate—but only after he’s earned it. Only after he’s bled and risked and nearly lost himself in pursuit of something greater. She’s not part of the legend. She’s the proof that he completed it.
Let me be clear: women are not finish lines. We are not the prizes at the end of someone else’s becoming.
And still, Fatima is written as if that is her highest role.
We’re told she represents “pure love”—a love so evolved it does not need possession. And yes, I understand the metaphor. I understand that in the world of the book, her waiting is framed as strength, not passivity. But even so, the idea that the fullness of a woman’s character exists to affirm the fullness of a man’s journey feels… incomplete. At best.
I’ve started to wonder if the most radical thing Fatima did wasn’t loving Santiago unconditionally, but knowing that he wasn’t ready to love her completely. Not just because of where he was in his journey, but because of how he saw her: as an interlude. A holy pause. A symbol of what he stood to gain after he had become worthy.
Fatima was not waiting to be chosen. She was already whole. And that changes everything.
What if her silence wasn’t submission, but discernment?
What if her stillness wasn’t devotion, but power?
What if she didn’t follow him into the desert because she already knew her becoming didn’t require someone else’s map?
This is where I start to feel it in my chest—the tension between the way she was written and the woman I know her to be. The Fatima who felt the wind change before he arrived. The Fatima who knew how to draw water in a land of thirst. The Fatima who didn’t chase after him, not because she was resigned, but because she had already become what he was still trying to find.
I didn’t just send him into the desert because I believed in his legend.
I sent him because I believed in mine.
He needed to learn the language of the world.
I had already become fluent.He needed to find the treasure.
I had already become mine.
We meet the alchemist late in the book. He is wise and cryptic and elemental. He speaks the language of the world, turns metal to gold, and guides Santiago through the final stages of his journey. He is revered as the teacher, the one who knows.
But long before that, the boy met Fatima.
And she had already done what the alchemist would ask of him. She had already turned pain into wisdom. Stillness into discernment. Love into something sovereign.
She didn’t transform metal.
She transformed men.
She sends Santiago back into the desert not because she is selfless. She sent him back out because she is wise enough to know that the kind of love she offers cannot be held by someone who has not yet found themselves.
She was never the destination.
She was the discernment.
The catalyst.
The quiet forge.
We’re not given Fatima’s Personal Legend in the book. It’s never even hinted at. But maybe that’s because she already fulfilled it. Maybe her legend wasn’t about distance. It was about depth. Maybe it was choosing to be a mirror, not a mask. To love without losing herself. To know her worth in a world that reduces women to either the roadblock or the reward.
Maybe her legend was to stay beside the well because she was the well—deep, nourishing, ancient, and whole.
After he left, I kept drawing water from the well.
Not because I was waiting for him to return,
but because I still needed to drink.People don’t tell you that healing takes maintenance.
They make it sound like a one-time miracle—
like once you understand your worth, you never question it again.But the truth is, even after you become the treasure,
you still have to carry yourself through the world.
You still have to nourish the body that carries your spirit.
You still have to remember who you are
when the wind forgets your name for a while.So I rose early.
I touched the earth with bare feet.
I listened to the quiet until it spoke.And I kept becoming.
Fatima is not just a character. She is an archetype.
She is the woman who’s been written out of the center of her own story. The one remembered for her waiting, not her knowing. The one whose love is admired, but not reciprocated in full. The one who is always seen—but rarely understood.
She is also the woman who remembers. Remembers how to listen, how to let go, how to become her own miracle.
She is you.
She is me.
She is every woman who has ever chosen to stay rooted in her own legend even while loving someone who hadn’t found theirs yet.
So yes—The Alchemist may not pass the Bechdel (or, Bechdel-Wallace) Test. But maybe that’s because it wasn’t finished. Maybe it was never just Santiago’s story. Maybe it was always Fatima’s, too. And maybe, just maybe—she wasn’t simply the woman who waited by the well.
She was the well.
The wind. The desert. Mother Earth.
The treasure.
The alchemist.
All along.
They wrote my story in the margins.
A girl by the well. A story untold.
Waiting. Watching. Weeping, maybe.
They remembered my love, but not my name.
But I was never waiting. I was never still.
I was learning the language of the world.
And I am not the soul mate.
I am the soul.
I am the Alchemist.Maktub.
When I was done reading I thought, "I am legend". Thank you for this piece in a time when women are being so undervalued.
Fatima is pulling lady slipper this morning because she knows that she is loveable just the way she is. She’s at well to deepen her self awareness and I love that for her.